The post office in the little town was a most curiously primitive affair, being merely an awning of branches held up against a tree by a post in the ground. Under this an old man was seated on a chair; we saw nothing here to indicate a post office, but were assured this was the spot to deposit our letters. The man regarded me with surprise and distrust, and the sight of the three or four letters I wished to mail drew a large crowd. The old man could not read, and I told him where the letters were to go; then, after a great deal of jabbering among the crowd regarding the amount of postage, which I fortunately knew and told him, the letters were mailed by being deposited in an empty cigar box at his side, to be handed to the Indian mail carrier on his next trip out of Urique.
Our stay was unexpectedly prolonged by the illness of one of the party. It was the warmest season of the year in the deep tropical barranca, and the change from the cool mountain air of the high sierras was extremely trying to all. We found it was necessary to make an effort to bestir ourselves as far as sightseeing was concerned, but we dared to venture out only after sunset from our comfortable quarters in the thick adobe building. There was no twilight in the great cañon. Almost as soon as the sun disappeared behind the steep mountains darkness came; but the moonlight nights were simply glorious, transforming the tropical valley into a perfect fairyland; even the homely adobe houses were beautiful, and the most commonplace Mexican, in his great sombrero with a serape thrown gracefully over his shoulders, added a picturesque touch to the scene. Every available level spot of land in the valley had been turned by the owners into an orange grove or a ranch on which to raise fruits and vegetables for consumption by their families; and, as all the edible vegetation of nearly every clime grew there, their tables were always abundantly supplied.
INDIAN GIRL WINNOWING BEANS
In wandering along the river bank I noticed one very effective way the natives had to protect their gardens from the intrusions of the small boy or even smaller animals. On the top of a common adobe fence they planted a row of the cholla cactus, the most prickly of all that great family of needles. Even the agile cat could not get over nor around this formidable fence.
We made two ineffectual efforts to get away from Urique before we finally succeeded. In the first instance the packers did not arrive with the mules until noon, thinking by this ruse they would be able to camp in the valley instead of on the mountain, for they much prefer the tropical heat to the chill of the high mountains. The next time they were promptly on hand, but one of the party was too ill to sit up. The third time fortune favored us, and, after bidding adieu to our hospitable friends, we started for the famous Cerro Colorado mine, said to be the richest gold mine in all this part of Mexico. We followed the narrow mule trail that wound along the brawling river, hemmed in on either side by mountains towering three, four, and five thousand feet above us, and were well up the cañon before the first rays of the sun could reach us over the mountain tops. All along the trail the river was lined with beautiful flowering shrubs of every conceivable shade and color. Flitting around among them were brilliantly colored paroquets and many other birds with gay plumage. That morning's ride of ten or twelve miles up the cañon, sheltered as we were from the fierce rays of the sun—which emphasized and reflected the many-colored rocks of the mountains that were carved and sculptured into all beautiful and fantastic shapes—was one of such rare beauty and perfection that even the most graphic pen would despair of doing justice to the subject. About noon we crossed a small branch of the Urique River, for we had turned off from the main cañon into a smaller one, and then started up the steep mountain side. Up the weary mules scrambled and climbed for six long hours, resting now and then while we looked backward and downward at the land of the tropics, all wayside signs of which were fast disappearing. Just before leaving the Urique River we came to a native tannery, which was about as primitive an affair as any we saw in the whole Sierra Madres. For some two hundred yards along the wide river its bottom was white with outstretched hides held there by heavy stones on the upstream corners, and these hides were kept there for weeks to rid them of their hair. Of course we tasted but little of the water below that point. On enormous bent beams at the lower end was found a number of hides stretched, and naked men scraping them with sharpened stones. Despite the style of work, the leather they make is remarkably soft and pliable. An hour or two before our evening camp was made we were once more traveling along underneath the shade of the great somber pines, and the air seemed cold and unpleasant after our late tropical experience. As we had no tent with us, we simply spread our beds upon the soft pine needles and slept with the stars shining in our faces. At the first streak of daylight we were eating our breakfast, and shortly after were off over the velvety trail that led up the peaks and across many small barrancas toward the deep gorge in which was the celebrated Cerro Colorado mine.
